


our bodies possessed by light

by superstarrgirl



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: M/M, Post-Canon, Post-War, guess who's back (back again)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-29
Updated: 2019-06-29
Packaged: 2020-05-30 19:54:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19410262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/superstarrgirl/pseuds/superstarrgirl
Summary: “Louisiana ain’t far from Philly,” Edward Heffron muses on the boat back to New York, and six months later, he’s standing on Gene’s porch and looking like he hasn’t seen the business end of war in a little less than five years.Or,Eugene and Edward and finding footing after coming home





	our bodies possessed by light

**Author's Note:**

> Ooooooooh boy has it been a while! This has been a work in progress for quite literally years, but I've recently been on a BoB kick and felt like I needed to finish this for some reason. I hope you guys like it! I had grand plans for it that are significantly different to what ended up happening, but, what are ya gonna do? 
> 
> Title comes from Richard Siken's 'SCHEHERAZADE', which is one of the most beautiful poems I've ever read and something that everyone deserves to read at least once in their life. 
> 
> Disclaimer: this story is based on the portrayals in 'Band of Brothers', and I mean no disrespect to the actual men

“Louisiana ain’t far from Philly,” Edward Heffron muses on the boat back to New York, and six months later, he’s standing on Gene’s porch and looking like he hasn’t seen the business end of war in a little less than five years.

“Is it always this fuckin’ hot?” He demands as he elbows his way inside and drops his bag unceremoniously on Eugene’s floor, stripping out of his jacket and scarf. Eugene is still standing in the doorway, running through six different thoughts at the same time. 

_He’s here – why is he here? – Is someone dead? – God it’s been six months – I haven’t slept a full night in six months – Jesus H Christ I missed you_.

By the time he comes back to reality, Heffron is clattering around in his kitchen and shouting, “damn, Gene, you don’t got a single thing to eat!”

It takes much longer than it should, really, to find his voice. “Haven’t needed-,” he starts, clearing his throat when he notices how frail he sounds. “Haven’t needed to cook, my neighbors bring me food.” And it’s not technically a lie – his neighbors _do_ bring him dishes, piles of them, gumbo and jambalaya and crawfish cooked eight ways to Sunday. But he eats only a mouthful most nights before his stomach snaps in protest.

Six months and he’s still not used to the luxury of being alive.

In the kitchen, Heffron is rummaging through his practically empty pantry and clucking his tongue in disappointment. “This is a damn shame, Eugene. A god-damned shame,” he mutters, almost to himself more than Gene. “Come all this way to make you a nice meal, sent you a postcard with my date of arrival, and you don’t even got the hospitality to go out and buy some provisions, didn’t your mother raise you at all?”

Gene’s halfway to laughing when he suddenly realizes – “I didn’t get a postcard.”

The mumbling stops and Heffron grows oddly still, blinking at Gene with surprise in his gaze. “But I sent it out,” he says after a long silent moment, and Gene has to stop himself from laughing.

“Trust me, Heffron, if I got summin’ from Philly, I would have noticed.”

Heffron’s mouth opens and closes a number of times, and then he goes pale as a sheet. “Oh hell,” he murmurs, scrubbing a hand across his face. “I saw the damn thing on my desk as I was leavin’ to get on the train.”

There’s a heartbeat of silence, and then Gene starts laughing – this loud, sharp thing that rings through the kitchen and sends Babe into uproarious laughter as well, and once they’ve started, it’s like neither of them can stop.

 _God_ , Gene thinks as he clutches at his stomach, as tears roll down Heffron’s face. _I’ve forgotten what it’s like to feel happy_.

\--

He’s still a little unsteady on his feet when the nightmare wakes him that night, when he clambers out of bed and onto the back porch, dropping down onto the steps as the bayou choruses around him. It had been this, more than anything – the noises and the creatures and the hot, humid wind – that he had missed when he was curled up in a foxhole in the Ardennes. Back there, the world had been too quiet, too still.

Until someone started shrieking for a medic and bombs lit up the trees and the world got too loud all over again.

Gene glances back towards his house, at the darkened windows and the soft light spilling from the kitchen and onto the back porch. Somewhere upstairs, Babe is tucked under the covers of Gene’s guest bed, sleeping contentedly. He had been wiped out from the day and a half of traveling, but he had insisted on helping Gene make dinner, even if the only helping he did was standing in the corner of the kitchen and making snide remarks. When they sat down at the kitchen table, both with bowls of gumbo in front of them, Babe had dug in with the gusto of a man who hadn’t eaten in years. Gene had swallowed a few spoons, more than he has in the months since he got off the boat, but had then pushed the bowl away and watched as Babe finished his own bowl.

“You gonna eat that?” He had asked around a mouthful, and, without waiting for Gene to answer, had pulled the bowl closer and finished that too. Gene had watched, mystified at the thought that Heffron had only been back in his life less than a day and already he was making himself comfortable.

Heffron had insisted on doing the dishes, and had finally let Gene chase him up to bed when he nearly fell asleep at the kitchen table.

“Ain’t you gonna sleep?” He had slurred. The smile Gene gave him felt a little tight around the corners, but real nonetheless.

“Gon’ make myself a cup of tea and then I’ll be heading to bed, scout’s honor.” Heffron had narrowed his eyes but then mumbled something that sounded like _g’night Doc_ , and shut the door softly.

Now, sitting on his porch as the crickets whisper around him, he can’t ignore the strange feeling that settles in his stomach, like the whole fabric of his world has just been turned upside down.

With a sigh, he leans back against the railing and watches the stars painted against milky black until he can’t keep his eyes open, and then he goes inside and up to bed.

\--

Life with Heffron settles into something of a routine, and though Gene worries that he’ll be bored by the monotony of it, he doesn’t seem to mind in the slightest.

Every morning they wake at the same time and go for a run – three miles out, three miles back, legs thudding and heart pounding and chest aching – and then Gene gets ready to head out to the clinic in the town while Babe putters around and fixes up something resembling breakfast. Over coffee and eggs, Heffron tells him what he’s planning for the day. It usually consists of harassing the people in town for odd jobs or fixing things around Gene’s own home that he hasn’t gotten around to.

Much as he doesn’t want Heffron feeling like a workhorse, he can’t deny how nice it is to come home to a radio that finally works or a kitchen table that doesn’t wobble when you put a plate on it.

Oftentimes Gene won’t get home till late, and he’ll walk in to Heffron standing at the stove, stirring something in a pot and humming absentmindedly along with whatever the radio is playing. He’ll walk in to this and feel kind of like he’s been punched in the stomach at the domesticity of it all.

“Might domesticate you yet, Heffron,” he teases one night, and Babe throws a spoon at his head with a bright and bubbling laugh and regales him with stories of his own day.

He’s never seen Heffron like this – so carefree, so happy, so easy with his smiles. The war had taken its toll on all of them, and even now Gene isn’t sure any of them can manage to sleep through the night without bloodstained nightmares jerking them awake, but something about Louisiana seems to have calmed Heffron down. But then, he can’t say he’s ever seen him in Philly, so what does he know?

“Having him here has been good for you too, you know,” his mama says when they’re over for a family dinner after church one night. Heffron is in the backyard, piled under all four of Gene’s nieces and nephews. Rose, the youngest, seems particularly smitten with Uncle Gene’s new friend from up north.

Gene’s sister drops down beside him and smiles at him over a glass of wine. “You seem more at peace with yourself,” she agrees. Gene turns back to watch the melee in the backyard, and he can just hear Heffron’s South Philly accent, sharp as a knife curve, as he rolls around in the grass with the kids on his back. Their laughs ring bright and clear through the night.

He looks back to his mama, who’s watching him with something open in the lines of her face. “He reminds me,” Gene begins. “He reminds me that not all was lost in the war.”

Mama smiles something slow and sweet and leans over to push his hair back from his face. “War took you apart, _cher_ ,” she murmurs. “But I can’t help but feel that Edward Heffron is helping piece you together." 

When they get home that night, Babe stumbles onto the couch with a hand over his eyes and groans long-sufferingly. “Those little imps of your sister's might just kill me,” he says, and Gene laughs softly.

“Come now, they love you and your northerner accent,” he grins as he heads into the kitchen and pulls two beers from the icebox. In the living room, he gives one to Heffron and pops the other one open, dropping onto the open space of the couch next to Babe. “Rose, I think, is in love with you.”

Babe huffs out a laugh around the neck of the bottle. “She’s a lovely little thing,” he smiles softly, and Gene finds himself wanting to reach out and trace the curves of that smile. His heart thuds in his chest at the realization, but then Babe turns that soft smile onto him and says, “she must have been born right before you shipped out.”

It takes Gene much longer than it should to realize that Babe has said something, and he has to force his own hands to stop trembling around his beer. “March of 1942. Anna went into labor three days before I left for Georgia.” He remembers, in vivid clarity, how his mama and his sister were so worried he would never get to meet his niece, how they had fretted and fretted until his sister had called the house and whooped in joy when her water had broken. “I held that little girl in my arms and I remember thinking, _this is why I’m going to do this. So little ones like her have a world to make their own_.”

He looks over at Heffron and sees him staring right back, something gone soft and open in the lines of his face, like he’s been broken open. “S’that why you fought in the war?” He asks, and Gene nods once. His hands, he notes dimly, are back to shaking.

“One of the reasons,” he murmurs, and Babe tilts his head in an invitation to continue. With another long pull of beer, Gene decides to go for broke. “In Bastogne,” he starts. “In Bastogne, I found another reason. To keep fighting. Think it’s the only reason I made it home alive.”

Babe’s face has gone carefully blank, but his voice is wistful when he whispers, “what was it?”

Gene trains his eyes back on the condensation gathering around his sweaty palm, but he jerks up when Babe rests a hand on his knee. “I wouldn’t’a made it home without you,” he breathes out, all in a rush, and Babe goes very, very still. 

Silence sits, and it’s the loudest thing Gene thinks he’s ever heard, but then Heffron hinges forward and presses his lips to Gene’s and it’s like nothing else matters.

Everything that happens after that happens in rapid-fire succession.

Babe breathes, _Eugene_ , sharp and desperate, and Gene lunges forward and pushes Babe onto his back on the couch. Their kisses are hungry, but there’s a softness there, too, that Gene can’t miss. 

Babe bites on the juncture of Gene’s shoulder, and Gene lets out a gasp and moans, deep in his throat. Under him, Babe shivers as Gene pushes his hips down, and swallows Heffron’s groan with a deep kiss.

Gene gasps _Edward_ when Babe presses open-mouthed kisses to his jaw and his neck and his collarbone, and there’s a throbbing in his gut that makes his mind slow and sluggish. When he leans back, if only to get his bearings, he blinks down at the man spread beneath him and feels like the world grinds to a halt around them.

Babe’s red, red hair is mussed from where Gene had his fingers through it, and his face is flushed and his lips are swollen and red, but he’s grinning like the devil and Gene _wants_ , so badly he feels as though he’s going to burst open.

“C’mon, Gene,” Babe grins, and there’s some sort of challenge there that he can’t work out.

Gene leans down and bites at Babe’s lower lip, filing away the way Babe goes boneless against him for another time. Babe surges upwards and pulls him into a deep and bruising kiss that tastes like beer and sunshine and warmth everything Babe encompasses, everything that Babe is.

Edward Heffron is a supernova, Gene decides, and who is he to stop him from burning?

\--

That night, in bed, Gene curls around Babe’s back and whispers, “je t'aime, je t'ai toujours aimé.” Babe snuffles in his sleep and presses a kiss to the center of Gene’s chest, and for the first time in years, Gene sleeps without waking up to blood caked on his hands that he’s long since cleaned off.

\--

The phone call, when it comes, is not surprising.

Babe has been in Louisiana for nearing a month with no intentions to go home, and Gene has found himself lulling into the easiness of Babe – the easy smiles and dirty grins, the morning kisses and late-night whispers and the everything in between.

It’s a Saturday morning and Gene is still in bed, having kissed Babe sleepily as he got ready to head into town to get food for that night. Gene can’t fall back asleep, but as he listens to Babe collect his keys and hum softly under his breath, he finds he doesn’t want to get up yet, doesn’t want to break the air that’s settled around the house.

“Bye Gene!” Heffron calls up the stairs as he kicks the door open, and he doesn’t wait for an answer before the door slams behind him and Gene is left alone in the house. In spite of himself, Gene grins at the ceiling. How lucky he is, he thinks hazily as he swings his legs over the side of the bed, to have Edward Heffron in his life.

In the kitchen, he sets to making himself a cup of coffee and near about jumps out of his skin when the telephone rings. 

“Roe residence,” he says into the receiver as the water starts boiling.

There’s a tinny beat of silence, and then Bill Guarnere’s voice echoes down the line: “well shit, doc, how the hell are ya?”

Gene almost drops the phone in surprise.

“Holy shit,” he breathes, almost against his own will, and Bill laughs, genuine and happy, and Gene can’t help the smile that makes its way across his own face.

“Sorry to surprise you,” Bill says, even if he doesn’t sound all that sorry. “But, ya see, I’m looking for a redheaded dumbass that ran off to Louisiana about a month ago and seems to have forgotten about the rest of us schleps here in Philly.” 

“Well, gee, Bill, and here I was thinkin’ this was a social call to the man who saved your life,” Gene replies in kind, and Bill scoffs fondly.

“Ain’t you I gotta worry about, is it?” He asks, and then his voice fades for a minute as he talks to a woman on the other end of the line. When he comes back, he sounds wearier than Gene’s heard in quite some time. “No, it’s that dumbass who’s shackin’ up with you.”

“Think you need to worry about him?” Gene asks, and his tone is still light and teasing, but there’s some sort of heaviness in the question that Bill seems to hear, because he sucks in a breath and clicks his tongue.

“Well, I don’t know, doc,” Bill says carefully. “Should I be worried about him, or can I trust you to look after that shit-for-brains?” The unspoken question rings through the line, and Gene can’t help the way his own heart starts racing. Wild Bill was always smarter than anyone dared to give an NCO credit for.

Gene glances around his home, at the places where Babe has fit himself into like he’s never been anywhere else – at the plates they bought together, at the newspapers with the funnies ripped out, at the books on the coffee table – and can’t quite keep down the grin that spills forward like sunlight. “Yeah,” he says softly. “Think you can trust me, Bill.”

\--

When Babe gets home that afternoon, Gene crowds him against the door and kisses him, deep and honest and loving.

“What was that for?” Babe asks when Gene rocks back on his heels, but he’s smiling like it was the best homecoming present he could ever have received.

Gene shrugs and snatches the bags of food out of Babe’s hands. “Just missed you,” is all he says, but then he laughs when Babe wraps an arm around his waist and pulls him back in for another kiss. “You hungry?” He asks on a breath when Babe moves on to nipping at his throat.

“Fuck dinner,” Babe responds without heat, and Gene really can’t find it in him to disagree.

\--

There’s a world outside their front door, and they both know this. There’s families and there’s sharp stares of strangers, and there’s the bitter hatred of people who don’t understand.

When Gene tells his mama, she blinks at him over her coffee and then smiles, something bittersweet. “Always knew there was something special in the way that boy looked at you,” she says, and maybe he’s gone and broken her heart, but he knows she still loves him more than any hiss of judgement.

When Babe tells his ma, she gasps something about _grandchildren_ and _God_ and hangs up the phone. She calls back two hours later and, after a long minute, asks when she can meet Gene.

They lived through a war, and no one ever said love was fair, but Gene watches the way Babe glows in the early sunlight or how soft he goes after a long day in the bayou, and can’t help but think that the blood on his hands may never go away, but he knows Babe will stay with him to the end. This he knows.

And that’s all he needs.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on tumblr! https://always-stand-up.tumblr.com/
> 
> When Gene speaks French he says "I love you, I've always loved you." Props to google translate for that.


End file.
